YouTube Battles With Indies Over Royalties

The upcoming launch of YouTube’s subscription service has rights holders, particularly indies, wondering how it will affect them.
Independent labels have not reached an agreement with the Google-owned video site over how royalties will be dolled out when it debuts an ad-free paid subscription service.
Because an agreement hasn’t been reached, YouTube’s head of content and business operations Robert Kyncl, told the Financial Times that YouTube will start blocking the indies’ videos “in a matter of days.”
In retaliation for refusing YouTube’s terms about the paid subscription service, YouTube could remove content from those labels from its ad-supported streaming service as well, notes Billboard. This means the labels would lose that income stream. Additionally, because it is the responsibility of rights holders to request the removal of infringing work, YouTube might leave music from those labels up on its site but refuse to monetize it with advertising.

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Sarah Skates

Sarah Skates has been a writer and editor in the music business since 2004. She is a longtime contributor to MusicRow.

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